‘Every summer is scary’: Skinner Butte community faces fire fears after close call

Tiffany Hallmark was in the basement of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, Eugene’s historic Victorian mansion, when friends started texting her.

“There’s a fire on the butte. Are you OK?”

Hallmark, the live-in caretaker at the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, is typically tasked with keeping things in the home clean and organized, in addition to some yard work. But when a fire broke out Monday, Aug. 17, on Skinner Butte, the job changed: She was prepared to try and save a historic mansion from going up in flames. 

She grabbed what could not be replaced — her external hard drives and her husband’s immigration paperwork — and left the house. She smelled smoke. Hallmark grabbed a hose to start spraying down the house’s exterior and surrounding the house in case the flames spread.

“I was definitely in high anxiety,” she said, describing her mindset during the fire: “What should I do? What should I do? What should I do?”

That question is a familiar one on Skinner Butte, the city’s first neighborhood and one at perennial risk for fire. Wild turkeys walk past Eugene’s historic houses, including the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, along with residential homes, among tall trees and stretches of dry grass. 

It’s also a popular spot for visitors, some of whom can be careless with flicked cigarettes, lit fireworks and other fire sources that could, one day, turn Eugene history into kindling. (The Aug. 17 fire had low impact, burning 0.6 acres before local fire crews quickly got it under control; police are investigating it as a possible arson.)

“It’s always scary,” said Leah Murray, the longtime executive director of the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, who stepped away from the role earlier this month. “Every summer is scary.”

What does fire risk on Skinner Butte look like?

While the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House is in particular fire danger, being a wooden, historic landmark nestled within trees, Skinner Butte as a whole could be threatened if a large fire broke out.

Eugene-Springfield Community Wildfire Protection Plan’s vulnerability assessment of the metropolitan area marks Skinner Butte as having a direct exposure to fire risk. (The plan defines direct exposure zones as areas with “high burn probability and intense fire behavior.”)

Each year, the city of Eugene closes the parking lot and access road at Skinner Butte Park from June through October to stave off a possible fire, citing a history of illegal fireworks activity and brush fires in the summer. Since 2017, the city has also made a point to proactively clear dense underbrush, dead cedars and non-native shrubs on the butte to curb fire risk, a process called fuel reduction.  

Marcia Long, 88, lives in Ya-Po-Ah Terrace, the high-rise retirement community on Skinner Butte and the tallest building in Eugene. 

The building is adjacent to the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, but Long said Ya-Po-Ah residents don’t share the fear that lovers of the wooden Victorian building do: Ya-Po-Ah is made of poured concrete, has a fire safety plan and regular fire drills for residents, which make Long feel safe.

When the fire started Monday, Long said, Ya-Po-Ah residents were instructed to keep their windows closed as the fire burned. She said living in a fire-prone location means people need to familiarize themselves with what to do if a fire breaks out. 

“I think it’s up to each individual to be aware of their area, stop and take time and think, ‘OK, if there was a fire, how do I get out of here?’” she said.

Brett Rauber, owner and executive chef of The Campbell House Inn, said the mood at the boutique hotel, east of Ya-Po-Ah Terrace, was not one of panic. Once he smelled fire outside Monday, he called the Eugene Police’s non-emergency line for guidance on where he should take guests. They were told to stay at the hotel, where a housekeeper watched the fire on a video livestream. 

Rauber said the hotel has reduced the number of gas fireplaces in recent years to lessen fire risk in the building. But there’s enough to worry about in daily life without getting too far into things that are far out of his control, he added.

“All I can ask is for the people who have their safety in our hands to do everything they can, and I feel comfortable and confident that they have,” he said. “There (are) always bad actors, but I like raising my son in a town like this because people care. Maybe that’s delusional of me to think there’s not a ton of people with malice in their heart in Eugene, but that’s been my experience.”

Grabbing a hose, just in case

Francesca Miller, a renter of 27 years on Pearl Street, a block north of Ya-Po-Ah Terrace and the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, said she has never been scared of fires on Skinner Butte until last week. 

She’s a smoker who makes a point of smoking inside to not spark a fire in her dry, grassy yard, but she had not considered what a real fire situation near her house would look like before Aug. 17.

First, she heard the sirens. Then about 10 minutes later, she got a phone notification telling her to evacuate because of a fire on Skinner Butte — but the notification didn’t say where on the butte the fire was. 

Miller hunted through the house for her cat, a six-year-old calico named Nina, who was scared by the sirens, to put into a carrier.

Like Hallmark at the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, Miller also grabbed a hose and started to sprinkle water on the center of the house and lawn. 

Though the fire crews were quick to manage the Aug. 17 fire (Miller praised them for “really hauled ass” to put the fire out), she said it permanently changed how she feels about living on Skinner Butte and inspired her to take more fire precautions for the future.

“I never really thought about it,” she said. “But then, logically, there’s no reason why it can’t happen here, too. And it did.”

What fire would mean for the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House

Back at Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, a green, Queen Anne-style manse built in 1888 and named for the three Eugene families who called it home over the years, the fire risk is still acutely felt. 

It’s a history they would rather not see repeated: The house has burned before, once during its initial 1888 construction and again during a remodel in the 1950s. 

“Our poor house has burned twice,” Hallmark said. “I don’t need it to do it again.”

While the interior of the house has a fire suppression system, with sprinklers and fire extinguishers, the wooden exterior is a different story. There is some defensible lawn space, but the house is firmly surrounded by foliage. 

Murray and Hallmark both pointed to the impact that “small” actions — dropping a cigarette butt or lighting a firework on the dry hill grass — could have. The house itself, nearly 140 years old, retains much of its original wood and historic collections from the city’s early history. Digitizing those collections, Hallmark said, would see people lose out on the experience of physically walking through what an affluent family home from the 1880s looked like. 

“It wouldn’t have the living history of it,” Hallmark said. “It could look the same, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

Murray pointed to the larger context of Skinner Butte as the city’s first neighborhood and what could be lost in the event of a large, uncontrollable blaze. 

“It is the beginning of Eugene,” she said. “That is where Eugene started. There’s the Mims House, there’s the Campbell House, there (are) so many other historic places in that neighborhood that we don’t need to lose. We don’t want people to be out of homes, but we really don’t want to lose that history. And once it starts, it’s going to go.”